Student Dancers to Perform at National Conference

Three Salem students, seniors Calleah Solomon and Hannah Calloway and junior Katherine Williams, are taking their own choreographed dances to the American College Dance Association Conference this coming March at West Virginia University.

The conference is a collection of classes and performances that highlight different aspects of dance. Soloman, Calloway and Williams’ dances will be viewed by other students from various schools as well as professors and professional choreographers. The American College Dance Association Conference is popular, and thus has limited availability.

“It opens at 8 a.m. and usually is filled to capacity within a few minutes. Basically we get to go based on speed and luck,” Williams said.

The three dances being taken to the concert were picked last spring through voting within the dance company. Since then, Williams has been focusing on training the dancers. Williams’ dance, titled Haunted Reminiscence, includes Williams, senior Palmer Holland, junior Deanndra Watkins, sophomore Shae Bove, first-year Mary Katherine Conaway and junior Erica Dixon.

The dance, which Williams’ choreographed herself, was inspired by the song she ended up pairing the dance with, Cocorosie’s “Werewolf.”

“I ended up researching the meaning behind the song, and it is about the sexual abuse the singer suffered as a young girl. Eventually I came to this idea of remembering the things in your past that haunt you and working through them. I wanted to find a way to display the trapped and haunted feeling that can come with remembering traumatic parts of your past,” Williams said.

The conference will be from March 18 to March 21 of 2016. Those interested in finding out more about the conference and Salem’s dance company should contact the head of the dance department Heidi Echols via her email heidi.echols@salem.edu.